2022 Front Page Awards
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 5, 2022
Press Contact: Jennifer H. Cunningham
president@newswomensclubnewyork.com
Cutting through clouds of misinformation, The Newswomen’s Club of New York Announces its 2022 Front Page Award Winners
The Front Page Awards, presented since 1937 by the Newswomen’s Club of New York, recognizes journalistic excellence among women.
In a year spent fighting for facts, New York City’s newswomen prevailed. With “gaslighting” crowned Merriam-Webster’s word of the year, these intrepid reporters strove to unmask lies, reveal truths and demand transparency, as we have for the past hundred years. Fierce, probing journalists exposed horrific prison conditions, wove intricate portraits of life in communities of color, and stripped the veil of misinformation from cogent issues such as coronavirus vaccines and election denial.
It was a year of questions. The pandemic was over. Or was it? To mask, or not to mask? What would happen to those who orchestrated the Jan. 6 insurrection? How, and when, will Russia’s invasion of Ukraine end, and what are the conditions in both countries as a result of the war? Our newswomen set out to answer them.
The 85th annual Front Page Awards pay tribute to exceptional newswomen at more than two dozen local, regional, and national outlets across the New York metropolitan area.
The 2022 Front Page Awards will be presented in person for the first time since before the pandemic, at the New York Athletic Club on Jan. 26, 2023. You can follow the Awards through the Newswomen’s Club of New York on Twitter, @NYNewswomen , and Instagram, @nynewswomenclub.
Tickets and tables for the Front Page Awards can be purchased here. Please contact Jennifer Cunningham for sponsorship opportunities at president@newswomensclubnewyork.com.
The Front Page Award for Journalist of the Year goes to Jan Ransom of The New York Times, for her exposure of the violent, lawless conditions among inmates in Rikers jail, and the decades of mismanagement that have allowed those conditions to flourish. A New York Times investigative reporter focusing on criminal justice, law enforcement, and incarceration in New York, Ransom covered the trial of Harvey Weinstein, among other high-profile crime cases, since joining the staff in 2017. She has written on similar topics at The Boston Globe, the New York Daily News and the Philadelphia Daily News.
The Marie Colvin Award for Foreign Correspondence goes to Valerie Hopkins of The New York Times, who provided crucial updates and insights into the Russia-Ukraine war, painting vivid, visceral verbal pictures of life under Russian occupation, from rapes to imprisonment to the millions of refugees fleeing the violence.
The Ida B. Wells Award Honoring Exceptional Coverage of Communities of Color goes to May Jeong of Vanity Fair for her detailed, nuanced portrait of the lives of Asian Americans as seen through the lens of the Atlanta spa shootings of 2021.
The Martha Coman Front Page Award for Best New Journalist will go to Yoonji Han, Insider’s Voices of Color Reporter, who took readers inside the Unification Church, using the assassination of former prime minister Shinzo Abe as a starting point. She also profiled New York City’s Chinatown and how it weathered the coronavirus pandemic, and showed the ways in which Title IX failed to protect women of color from abuse, assault and discrimination.
The Nellie Bly Award for Best Bylined Front Page Story goes to Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy of USA Today, for a deep dive into Black home ownership and the wealth gap that “shines a light on this and other historical discriminatory practices in the real estate market,” according to the judges. “She details the first-hand experiences facing Black homeowners of modest means in their quest to own a house and what they say it took to make their dreams a reality” and “vividly illustrates” the disproportionate impact that housing boom-and-bust cycles have on Black Americans seeking to buy a first home.
The Lifetime Achievement Award goes to Susan Chira. Currently editor in chief of The Marshall Project, Chira has had a storied, groundbreaking career. She was a reporter and editor for The New York Times from 1981 to 2019, overseeing coverage in a number of capacities, ranging from foreign editor to deputy executive editor and everything in between. Chira was part of the team that won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for exposing the sexual abuse and harassment of women by powerful men, including Harvey Weinstein.. In all, Chira supervised five Pulitzer-winning teams during her tenure at the Times, winning numerous other awards along the way.
For her 1998 book, A Mother’s Place: Choosing Work and Family Without Guilt or Blame (HarperCollins Canada), Chira scoured the cutting-edge scientific research of the time to show that children of happily working mothers turn out just fine, and that stay-at-home mothering was not necessarily the only way to raise a child.
Whether dissecting the racist weaponizing of police dogs, drawing attention to blue-collar sexual harassment as the MeToo moment burgeoned, or detailing the raw emotion around her own miscarriage, Chira has never blanched. Chira moved over to The Marshall Project in 2019. We salute Chira and her rich career.
Full List of Front Page Award Winners
AUDIO
Feature
“The Pay Check,” Bloomberg
Rebecca Greenfield, Team Leader, Equality
Kelsey Butler, Reporter, Equality
Susan Berfield, Reporter, Investigations
Sophie Alexander, Reporter, Wealth
Gilda Di Carli, podcast producer,
Jeannette Neuman, Reporter
Jill Filipovic, Freelance Journalist
Investigative Reporting
NY City News Service, “Home Ed”
Mary Steffenhagen, Reporter
DOCUMENTARY
Long Form Documentary
ABC News Studios “Let the World See”
Jeanmarie Condon, Senior Executive Producer
Fatima Curry, Executive Producer
Adrienne Magun, Misha Rezvi, Producers
Shilpi Gupta, Editor
Tracey Allred, Ava Palmo, Emma Piscia, Associate Producers
Short Form Documentary
NBC News “Paradise Lost: The Weight of Gold”
Cynthia McFadden, Correspondent
Lisa Cavazuti, Producer
Akira Fukui, Editors
LOCAL REPORTING
Breaking News
Claudia Irizarry-Aponte, Reporter
The City, “Bronx Fire”
Feature
Samantha Max, Reporter
Gothamist, “A New York City rapper turned himself in for murder 13 years ago, now his prosecutor wants him freed”
Investigative Reporting
Laura Nahmias, Reporter
Bloomberg, Coverage of NYC's Mayor's Office
MAGAZINES
Essay
Irin Carmon, Reporter
New York Magazine, “I, Too, Have a Human Form”
Feature
Jennifer Gonnerman, Reporter
The New Yorker, “The Witness”
Interview
Lila Shapiro, Reporter
New York Magazine, Vulture, “The Undoing of Joss Whedon”
Investigative Reporting
Sarah Sax, Reporter
High Country News, Type Investigations, “When the heat is unbearable but there’s nowhere to go”
NEWSPAPERS
Breaking/Spot News
The Wall Street Journal, “The Fall of Roe v. Wade”
Laura Kusisto, Reporter
Jennifer Calfas, Reporter
Dominique Mosbergen, Reporter
Deanna Paul, Staff Writer
Kara Dapena, Graphics Editor
Beat Reporting
Apoorva Mandavilli, Reporter
The New York Times, “Grading the U.S. Response to Viral Threats”
Feature
Charity Scott, Reporter
The Wall Street Journal, “Facing Labor Shortages, Pella Reinvents the Company Town”
Investigative Reporting
Janet Reitman, Contributing Writer
The New York Times, “I Helped Destroy People”
The Nellie Bly Award for Best Bylined Front Page Story
Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy, Reporter
USA Today, “ ‘We are a broken people’: The importance of Black homeownership and why the wealth gap is widening”
ONLINE
Blogs
Jennifer Mascia
The Trace, Ask the Trace Series
Feature
The Atlantic, “The Holocaust Started With My Great-Uncle's Murder”
Mattie Kahn, Reporter
Investigative Reporting
The New York Times, “They Searched Online for Abortion Clinics. They Found Anti-Abortion Centers”
Hanaan Sarhan, Solana Pyne, Emma Cott, Nilo Tabrizy, Aliza Aufrichtig, Rebecca Lieberman and Nailah Morgan
Digital Video
The New York Times, “48 Hours in a Kansas Abortion Clinic: Longer Wait Times, Growing Fears”
Senior Producer: Sameen Amin
Executive Producer: Solana Pyne
Nicole Salazar, Producer
Victoria Simpson, Editor
Mariam Dwedar, Director of Photography
Multimedia News Package
Charlotte Owen, Editor in Chief
Bustle, “How to Move to the Suburbs”
Social Media Video
Maya Eaglin, Digital Reporter
NBC News Stay Tuned, “Howard University Dorm Crisis”
PHOTOGRAPHY
Feature
Gabriela Bhaskar
The New York Times, “Abortion Story”
Photo Editing
Heather Casey
The New York Times, “Uvalde Funerals”
Photo Essay
Elissa Curtis and Jennifer Levitz
The Wall Street Journal, “9/11 Portraits”
SPECIALIZED REPORTIN
Arts
Katya Kazakina, Art Reporter
Artnet News, “Art Detective”
Business
Suzanne Kapner, Reporter
The Wall Street Journal, “How Old Navy’s Strategy Unraveled,”
Editorial Opinion/Criticism
Mara Gay, Editorial Writer
The New York Times, “How to Spread Summer Fun”
Education
Erika Fry, Senior Writer
Environment
Dionne Searcey, Reporter
The New York Times, “Riches and the Rainforest”
Medicine/Health/Fitness
Jaimy Lee, Reporter
MarketWatch, “Inside the Ivermectin saga: a hacked password, mysterious websites and faulty data”
Personal Service
Jillian Berman, Deputy Enterprise Editor
MarketWatch, “New student-loan forgiveness guidelines explained: a step-by-step guide to taking advantage of the PSLF waiver”
Politics
Akela Lacy, Reporter
The Intercept, “Sexual Assault”
Science/Technology
Sharon Lerner, Investigative Reporter
The Intercept, “The Virus Hunters: How the Pursuit of Unknown Viruses Risks Triggering the Next Pandemic”
TELEVISION
Breaking News
CBS News, “The Beast”
Tanya Simon, Executive Editor
Nicole Young, Producer
Kristin Steve, Associate Producer
Feature
Vice, “The Missing”
Paola Ramos, Correspondent
Paulette Marte, Associate Producer
Chantal Flores, Local Producer
Beverly Chase and Subrata De, Executive Producer,
Nikki Machrone, Co-Archival Producer
Paula Salhany and Amanda Pisetzner, Supervising Producers
Lexie Mansfield, Post Production Manager
Interview
ABC News 20/20, “Escape From a House of Horror”
Diane Sawyer, Anchor and Writer
Christina Ng, Senior Broadcast Producer
Tess Scott, Jenny Wagnon Courts, Claire Weinraub, Senior Producers
Allison Weiner, Editorial Producer
Acacia Nunes, Anchor Editorial Producer
Janice Johnston, Executive Producer
Special Programming (Public Affairs or Editorial)
Weekend Nightly News, “One Night in America: Gun Violence Nation”
Kate Snow, Anchor
Matt Frucci, Executive Producer
Gabe Gutierrez, Gadi Schwartz, Jesse Kirssch, Correspondents
Janelle Richards, Jen-Tyng Hong, Senior Producers
Tom Ranzweiler, Micki Fahner, Janine Eduljee, Devyn Rafols-Nunez, Samira Puskar, Jackson Hudgins, Patrick Martin, Brian Michael, Producers
Special Reporting (Investigative or Enterprise)
Vice, “What It’s Like Trying to Get an Abortion in Texas Right Now”
Maral Usefi, Executive Producer
Nikki Egan, Executive Producer
Stacey Sommer, Supervising Producer
Simone Perez, Senior Editorial Producer
Leah Feiger, Managing Editor
Lena Jakobsson, Senior Producer
Paola Ramos, Correspondent
Carter Sherman, Correspondent
Luisa Conlon, Director of Photography
Jika Gonzalez, Director of Photography
Julia Lindau, Producer
Nour Seleem, Associate Producer
Victoria Lesiw, Editor
Ana Simões, Senior Creative Director
Susie Kim, Graphics Coordinator
Raquel Rei, Graphic Designer
Kate Wardell, Graphics Artist
WIRES
Beat Reporting
Riley Griffin
Bloomberg, “The Covid Battle”
Feature
Jennifer Peltz
Associated Press, “Surviving 9/11 was ‘just the first piece of the journey’ ”